Research in Real Time
Dear Naresh,
Every Thursday, for the last two years, Nourishing the Planet has featured an "Innovation of the Week" which has ranged from Multifunction Platforms and Tobacco as an Organic Pesticide to Fertilizer Tree Systems, Open Source Software, Seed Banks, Agroforestry, Compatible Technologies, and School Food Gardens.
Today,
we are asking you to tell us what innovations you think we should write
about. What are some exciting and innovative things you know about that
can be scaled up and replicated in other parts of the world?
We want to share your innovations within the Nourishing the Planet community, so email me your suggestions so that we can showcase your incredible work on our website.
This week we highlight a groundbreaking report by the International Livestock Research Institute which
reveals the heavy disease burden of zoonoses, or human-animal
transmitted diseases, for one billion of the world’s poor livestock
holders. We also reported on the DuPont Food Security Forum, where the Economist Intelligence Unit launched the Global Food Security Index developed
to address the need for “specific metrics to illustrate what food
security looks like at the local level, country by country.” And we discuss a recent New York Times article about India’s agricultural policy and its implications for food security throughout the country.
All the best,
Danielle Nierenberg
Nourishing the Planet Project Director
Worldwatch Institute
Here are some highlights from the week:
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According
to the UN Environment Programme some 60 percent of the world’s
ecosystems have been degraded over the past 50 years. With increasingly
scarce land and water resources expected in the coming decades, as well
as rising demand for food, farmers will need to find ways to produce
more on the world’s remaining arable land. Without alternatives,
expansion of agriculture can lead to deforestation and loss of other
vital ecosystems that millions of people rely on for their livelihoods.
But some innovative farmers are producing more food by using agriculture
to rebuild ecosystems and turn degraded land into productive farms.
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Pests
can be, well, a pest. They infest crops and reduce yields, decreasing
overall agricultural production and food security. To deal with pests,
such as mealybugs or spider mites, most farmers use chemical pesticides
which can negatively impact public health, pollute water supplies
through runoff, and, if pesticides are misused or overused, can actually
kill plants. Finding new methods to get rid of pests without requiring
chemical inputs has increasingly become a priority for many farmers. In
this post, Nourishing the Planet presents five crop management methods
that control pests without using chemical pesticides.
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Some
60 percent of all human diseases, and 75 percent of all emerging
infectious diseases, are zoonotic (human-animal transmitted infectious
diseases). In light of these staggering figures, the
Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute recently
released a report mapping the top 20 geographical hotspots of emerging
zoonotic diseases and emerging disease outbreaks. Among the study’s
findings, the report reveals the heavy disease burden of zoonoses for
one billion of the world’s poor livestock holders, in addition to
surprising new data on emerging diseases in industrialized countries,
many of which have never been mapped.
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Our
innovation of the week is SPIN, or Small Plot INtensive Farming, a
sustainable alternative to the large, monoculture farms that dominate
agriculture in the United States. In addition to giving tips on how to
maximize space efficiency on land, SPIN leaves much of the actual
growing decisions in the hands of the farmer. According to SPIN Farming,
a business that trains would-be farmers how to farm profitably on as
little as 5,000 square feet, its system “is not predicated on any one
set of life principals or philosophy, or any one method of soil prep or
maintenance. It can be combined with biointensive, biodynamic,
permaculture, vermaculture, aquaculture, double dig, [or] no till.”
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In
this interview, we speak with Bruce Melton, an independent civil
engineer who focuses his work on environmental and climate change
awareness. Through books, documentaries, and even songs, Melton works to
remove the disconnect between what the public knows and what climate
scientists know. “My main goal is to educate our government officials as
well as the public because we cannot create change with environmental
leaders alone.”
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Indian Food Policy: A Plentiful Harvest while Millions Starve
According to a recent New York Times article,
agricultural policy in India is shaped by two central goals: to achieve
higher, more stable prices for farmers than they would normally achieve
in an open market, and to distribute food to the poor at lower prices
than is available from private stores. India ranks second in the world
in agricultural output, and the sector employs 52 percent of the labor
force. Yet a fifth of its people are malnourished, double the rate of
countries such as Vietnam and China.
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The Global Food Security Index: Together, We Can Feed the World
On July 10, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the economic development research arm of The Economist,
launched the Global Food Security Index at the DuPont Food Security
Forum. The Index was commissioned by DuPont to address the need for
“specific metrics to illustrate what food security looks like at the
local level, country by country.” It rates and ranks 105 different
countries (only 105 were included based on available and reliable data)
and provides an interactive way to assess individual countries on where
they rank based on a variety of indicators ranging from food consumption
as a share of household expenditure, agricultural infrastructure, and
food safety.
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The Kuri: A Unique Study in Natural Selection
The Kuri cattle are a rare breed, found
along the shores of the Lake Chad Basin as well as across north-eastern
Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and Niger. Kuri are classified as humpless
longhorns, but are known by many other names such as Baharie, Dongolé,
Koubouri, or Buduma. The most common name, Kuri, stems from the regional
tribe who herded the breed for centuries in the Lake Chad area. The
Kuri breed is characterized by its unique horns. Though the horns can be
anything from 60–150 cm in length, the internal fibrous material and
thin exterior casing leaves the horns surprisingly lightweight. These
hollow horns are used as flotation devices, necessitated by the breed's
semi-aquatic habitat.
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